The Ben Graham Centre for Value Investing at the Ivey Business School, Western University, held its annual Value Investing Conference on April 14, 2026, in Toronto, Canada.
Hedge Fund Alpha attended the conference and will update this article with coverage, speaker highlights, and key takeaways following the event.
UPDATE: The full coverage of the conference in PDF for those readers who prefer it can be found below at the bottom of the post.
The conference followed the Ben Graham Centre’s International MBA Stock Picking Competition on April 13, 2026, where three finalist MBA teams presented their investment theses before a panel of professional value investors. See that coverage here: 2026 International MBA Stock Picking Competition: Three Way Split Over This Small-Cap Boat Company
Below are the full agendas for both events.
The Ben Graham Centre’s 2026 International MBA Stock Picking Competition Agenda
The Ben Graham Centre for Value Investing held its annual International MBA Stock Picking Competition in Toronto, Canada, on April 13, 2026.
The Ben Graham Centre’s 2026 Value Investing Conference Agenda
7:45am – 8:30am – Registration – Coffee & Breakfast
8:30am – 8:45am – Welcoming the Delegates, Introductions and Opening Remarks – George Athanassakos – “Stock Picking: Is It Skill or Luck?”
Opens the conference with the question every value investor secretly asks themselves: when it works, was it insight – or was it the dice?
8:45am – 9:15am – Morning Keynote Speaker – Stephen Penman – “Redeeming Value”
Argues that simple book-value investing has been broken since the financial crisis, and offers two formulas to put growth back at the heart of B/P before declaring value dead.
9:15am – 9:25am – Morning Keynote Speaker Q&A
9:25am – 11:40am – Value Investor Panel 1 – Presentations and Q&A
9:25am – 9:30am – Value Investor Panel 1 Welcome
9:30am – 10:00am – Barbara Ann Bernard – “Investing Where Others Won’t or Can’t”
Traces her path from shorting bubbles to hunting physical chokepoints in the global economy, and explains why passive investing and a true margin of safety can no longer coexist. This was a really intriguing talk both in terms of strategy and a specific investment position that she has built.
10:00am – 10:30am – Dennison (Dan) T. Veru – “The Small Cap Super Cycle Begins”
Makes the case that tariffs quietly detonated a clearance event in small caps, and that the easing cycle ahead will hand disciplined investors their best setup in a generation.
See: Palisade’s Dennison Veru On Why The Small-cap Super Cycle Is Starting With Some Help From AI
10:30am – 11:00am Simon Skinner – “Value Investing in the Age of AI”
Warns that AI won’t make irrational investors rational – it will just make them faster, louder and more certain, and explains how a contrarian survives a market moving at machine speed.
See: Orbis’ Skinner On Why AI Will Amplify Market Inefficiencies & 3 Stocks Which Could Benefit
11:00am – 11:20am – Value Investor Panel 1 Q&A
The morning panel tackles the questions every manager is privately wrestling with: is AI an existential risk to small investment shops, what signals actually build conviction in a catalyst, how long should you stay with a thesis once it’s working, and what could finally break the grip of passive investing on the U.S. market.
Note: Parts of the Q&A session have been added to each speaker’s post above.
11:20am – 11:40am – 2026 International MBA Stock Picking Competition – Winner Announcement
Kim Shannon hosts the 2026 International MBA Stock Picking Competition reveal – who beat whom, and which schools are quietly building the next generation of value talent.
11:40am – 12:10pm – Lunch
12:10pm – 12:15pm – Luncheon Keynote Speaker Introduction – Introduction by: Dr. George Athanassakos
12:15pm – 12:55pm Luncheon Keynote Speaker – Francis Chou – “Ben Graham Insurance Edition”
Brings Graham’s mispricing discipline to the insurance world, drawing on a career of buying dollars for fifty cents in the one corner of finance where the downside really can be covered twice.
See Francis Chou Details Three Big Returns In Insurance Vehicles Using Grahamian Principles
12:55pm – 1:15pm – Luncheon Keynote Speaker Q&A
1:15pm – 2:00pm – Coffee Break
2:00pm – 3:55pm – Value Investor Panel 2 – Presentations and Q&A
2:00pm – 2:05pm – Value Investor Panel 2 Welcome
2:05pm – 2:35pm – Dan Rasmussen – “The Humble Investor”
Attacks the single most dangerous habit in professional investing – forecasting – and argues that the path to durable returns runs through the markets everyone else has given up on.
2:35pm – 3:05pm – Kim Shannon – “Waiting for Godot: The Dilemma of the Ignored Value Rally”
Draws on decades of market history to argue a 20-year inflationary cycle has already started, and that the next great value rally may already be underway while the crowd keeps waiting.
See: Sionna’s Kim Shannon – The 20-Year Inflationary Cycle Has Already Started
3:05pm – 3:35pm – Thomas Russo – “Capacity to Suffer – Global Value Investing”
Explains why the best global compounders are run by families willing to bleed earnings today to own the next generation of consumers, and why most public-market managers can’t stomach it.
See: Thomas Russo On “Capacity to Suffer” And The Three Layers Needed For It
3:35pm – 3:55pm – Value Investor Panel 2 Q&A
The afternoon panel ranges from a 500-year Rothschild asset-allocation playbook to why international value has quietly outrun international growth, from the traps waiting for foreign investors in Japan’s small-cap bargain bin, to what it actually takes for a long-term owner to sell a decades-held position – and how a concentrated portfolio of overlapping compounders rebalances itself through the discipline of buying what’s fallen and trimming what’s run.
Note: Parts of the Q&A session have been added to each speaker’s post above.
3:55pm – 4:25pm – Afternoon Keynote Speaker – Murad Al-Katib
Takes the audience from a Saskatchewan lentil field to a $3.5B global food business, and makes the case that feeding the next billion people is the most defensible long-duration theme in markets today.
See: Murad Al-Katib On Building A Moat In Global Food Security
4:25pm – 4:40pm – Afternoon Keynote Speaker Q&A
4:40pm – 4:45pm – Concluding Remarks
Login required to continue reading.
Setup a free account to get access to this article (no credit card required).
View Full Article
